May 2009
The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athenaby Shabbir on Friday, 15th May 2009 20:47
I remember watching the movie Pitch Black years ago on DVD after borrowing from a friend, and thought back then that it's a pretty cool concept about having eyesight where you can only see in the dark. Vin Diesel played the main role, and seeing he has a great interest in video games, he also used that character to create a gaming franchise, known as The Chronicles of Riddick. I'm not sure which came first, Pitch Black or the games.
Assault on Dark Athena is a new iteration of the game, made for modern consoles. I saw the demo on Xbox Live and thought I'd give it a go, since I heard the guys from 1UP talking about it on their podcasts and it sounded quite good. It reminded me of something like Deus Ex and Syphon Filter, at least by description. When I actually tried the game myself, it was a different story.
Let's get the graphics and stuff out of the way, all of it is pretty much on par with the current standards for graphics. It doesn't do anything special in any way, but it's solid. At times it can be a little dark, however that is the intended look to utilise stealth in the game. The game encourages the player to use stealth to progress and to take down opponents, although you can go for a more FPS approach when you gain guns.
It's set in a futuristic universe, where you can control drones from a pod. Drones are just like soldiers, but using a pod, which looks like a motorbike, you can navigate the drone from safe distance wherever you wish and take out opponents this way. Or use them as pawns for certain puzzles in the game.
What I found disappointing about Assault on Dark Athena is the level design. I found it quite un-intuitive where to go, and felt like I was playing an FPS game from about 5 years ago where not much thought is given into the level design and you spend more time running down every hallway and backtracking to find out where you're really supposed to go. The doors have no obvious button to open, they just either are open or closed.
Since it was a demo, I wasn't willing to spare it any lifelines and packed up at that point, unwilling to explore further. It wasn't a title that I had been anticipating or investing interest in, it was just something I'd heard of and thought about giving it a try. I guess it just wasn't my type of game.
Metal Gear Solid Touch on iPhoneby Shabbir on Sunday, 10th May 2009 13:53
I recently downloaded MGS Touch Lite on the iPhone, a spin-off title based on Metal Gear Solid 4 on the PlayStation 3. I wasn't expecting much at first at all, since all I've heard is that it's a pretty poor game, and just an attempt to cash in on the popular MGS franchise by making an on-rails shooter.
When I first tried the game, it began taking me through an explanation of the controls. Fair enough, I thought, I guess I'll need to know how to play the game even though I'm usually the type of person to jump in and play around myself. However, it kept throwing pages of explanations at me, and I just got frustrated and exited the application there and then! I didn't get to the actual game until later.
So once I skimmed through the controls, I started the game. For starters, it's an on-rails shooter like I mentioned. This means you don't control any movement of your character, you are simply put in an environment and enemies pop out from places and it's your job to shoot them. That's probably not what a lot of MGS fans were hoping for, since movement was a key aspect of the MGS series on the PlayStation. You would go around, stealthily, take out your opponents tactically and move on. Over here, it really is just like the infamous Duck Hunt back on the NES.
The controls have been the centre of debate when it comes to discussing iPhone games. With MGS Touch, I wasn't sure at first - maybe the lengthy explanation made me feel like it may just be too complicated. However, once I got into the game, it was actually very enjoyable to play around with. By default, your character, Snake, is crouched and hidden so he cannot be shot at. You can move your finger around the screen which will make him pop up, and aim around at your enemies. Tapping the screen will shoot, while using two fingers and pinching outwards will cause you to use your sniper. It's something that you need to try yourself to get the hang off, but it doesn't take long to get used to at all and feels very intuitive.
I played through the Lite version (demo) of the game. It plays through the first few levels, which are pretty short. During each level, you are given an objective, and these are typically to kill a certain number of enemies before you can move on to the next level. In the Lite version, these were simple enough and very short, however I'm assuming in the full version they'll be a lot harder.
The game has nice graphics which remind me of MGS4 as the environments are similar, and the game is based on that anyway. It doesn't do anything special however, as you would probably expect it. It just uses 3D objects and moves them around a static environment, but does a good job at making them appear 3D. I'm not sure if this is worth a full purchase though, since it really is just an on-rails shooter just like Duck Hunt. If the game was about 2 or 3 punds, then I think a purchase would be justifiable but for 5 pounds, it's pricing itself as a higher end game which I don't really think it is.
So in conclusion, it's a nice enjoyable little game, but nothing special and doesn't justify the price. I hope maybe in the future the price will drop, as they do on a lot of games.